I have been replaying the scenarios that came with patch #5 of SCS and I realized something strange was going on in Futurology. The damage for any fire, even if the building was not damaged, is equal to the cost of building a new copy of it. Why then should anyone maintain a fire department or dispatch fire trucks? Why not just demolish the burning building and build a new one? I came here to look for an answer and could not find any discussion of it. Am I totally misunderstanding what is presented on the ticker?

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Do you mean that putting out the fire costs the same as building another building? Sending firetrucks should cost $500 each time you hit the dispatch button.

Each fire truck costs $250 to send, but then on the news ticker it says that fire damages were X amount, where X is the cost of the building that was on fire. I try to use a lot of Software Studios if the scenario allows for it, so it is not easy to tell if the cost was actually deducted from my simoleans because of the variability in income each day.

Well, that's a laugh on me. I've been demolishing burning buildings and rebuilding, figuring it was cheaper to do that.

We can click on a building to see how valuable it is, even when it is on fire. I wonder if the news ticker was supposed to display an actual damage repair value but was never implemented correctly? The other numbers in green, your net income and your maintenance expense, seem to be accurate. Very peculiar.